


let him go (don't let me leave)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Phil Coulson: human disaster, Post 3x09, Walking away, fucks sake phil, join me in my angst cave, mention of Coulson/Rosalind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5343029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Coulson can think about is the way Daisy had reached out, pressed her fingers against his, and how he'd ignored it until she pulled back. The curve of her cheek as she'd evaluated her childhood so openly, the blink of her lashes when she'd mentioned her mother. Their last conversation, and he'd brushed her away, ignored her own hurts, accused her of forgiving too much. As if only he was hurt by Ward, as if Daisy didn't have so much more right to that anger. </p><p><em>I will never forgive him,</em> Daisy's voice rings in his head, and <em>two sides of a coin,</em> until Coulson can't tell anymore who she's talking about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let him go (don't let me leave)

Ward is dead, and not by Coulson's hand, and it turns out: it didn't matter. His revenge was futile. His revenge was  _stupid_.

When he wakes up, he's on Zephyr One, doesn't understand how he got there. The team give him a wide berth on the flight home. He doesn't care; he barely notices. The silence rings in his ears, and he just sits, stares dully at his hands. There's still dried blood under his fingernails, and he can't tell, now, whether it's his or Rosalind's.

"Mr Coulson," someone says, "Mr Coulson," and he looks up to Lincoln Campbell standing over him, a medical kit in hand. 

"What," Coulson replies, and the word barely comes out. He clears his throat, tries again. "What is it." His voice is rusty, his throat raw. Something happened on that planet. Something happened here. Something happened.

 _What happened?_ he asks himself, and feels like he should know. 

(Lincoln's face says, something terrible has happened. What happened, Coulson thinks again, what is it, it's not Rosalind. That was- that was _terrible_ , too, but that's not what Lincoln's face says. What is it.)

"I think you have a concussion," Lincoln tells him, sits down beside him. "I need to check you over for a brain injury."

"Fitz," Coulson remembers, as Lincoln is shining a pen light in his eyes. "Is he-"

"He's stable," Lincoln says crisply, examines the wound on his head with gentle fingers. "Simmons too. She's got some nasty injuries. Will's in there with her. You do have a concussion, a pretty bad one. I'm surprised you're not feeling worse."

Coulson doesn't know what  _worse_ feels like. He doesn't know why Lincoln's doing this.

"You don't like me," he says bluntly, and Lincoln pauses as he places a bandage over the cut on Coulson's head.

"No," he agrees eventually. "She does, though. She cares for you. She'd want you looked after. And I'm the team doctor now, so." He finishes, hands Coulson some painkillers and a bottle of water. "You'll live," he says, not unkindly, and walks away.

 

 

He goes to his office as soon as they get back to base. When he sits down in his chair, it doesn't feel like his own. There's a file open on his desk.

The Secret Warriors. It's got an authorizing signature at the bottom. Not his.

 _Daisy's got her team_ , he thinks, wonders where she is. Debriefing her people, perhaps. Caring for them. Making sure they've survived their first mission.

His head's throbbing now, his chest aching, and he wonders how long it is since he slept. He's got none of the fired-up anger left, none of the fury that's driven him for days. It's all burned out of him, and all he can think is, he's failed them all.

Mack walks in, comes to a stop when he sees Coulson behind the desk. "Sir," he says, very cautious. "Or is it Director, again?"

Coulson doesn't think he's fit to take that title back. He crossed lines the Director of SHIELD shouldn't cross. The first line, that was handing over the title at all, as if passing off his title to Mack could absolve him of anything at all. As if he could put it down and pick it right back up without anything fracturing in between.

"No," he says, "not- Director Mackenzie, where's Agent Johnson?" Mack makes a very complicated expression that finishes on wary concern.

"You don't know," he says, and Coulson thought his heart was too old, too damaged, for anything new, but something clutches in him at the look of pity Mack's giving him now. Is this the terrible thing. Is Daisy- 

 _She'd want you looked after_ , he hears Lincoln say again.

"She held the portal open for almost an hour," Mack tells him, and his voice has never been more serious or more tightly constrained. "We couldn't find you. She insisted we keep searching." Coulson can't breathe, can't speak. He was chasing after Ward, a fool's errand for a man who was already dead, and Daisy-

Daisy-

 _I can't lose you too_ , he thinks, sharp and painful.  _I can't lose you too_.

"She's in the medbay," Mack says. "She hasn't woken up yet. It took Lincoln a while to get her heart beating again."

"She's alive," Coulson whispers.

"Yeah," Mack says, "yeah."  _No thanks to you_ comes across loud and clear just in Mack's stance, the way he shifts, stares hard at Coulson for a moment. "May's with her," he adds. "And Bobbi. You should be there when she wakes up."

He's not. He's not there. All Coulson can think about is the way Daisy had reached out, pressed her fingers against his, and how he'd ignored it until she pulled back. The curve of her cheek as she'd evaluated her childhood so openly, the blink of her lashes when she'd mentioned her mother. Their last conversation, and he'd brushed her away, ignored her own hurts, accused her of forgiving too much. As if only  _he_ was hurt by Ward, as if Daisy didn't have so much more right to that anger. 

 _I will never forgive him_ , Daisy's voice rings in his head, and  _two sides of a coin_ , until Coulson can't tell anymore who she's talking about.

He pauses at the medbay door. Daisy's tiny in the bed, fragile in a way that's hard to bear, and he remembers all of the last times, the times before now. He's always been there, when she wakes up.

He doesn't have the right, this time. He's lost it along with everything else.

 

 

His phone rings, after two days away from the base, and when he answers, it's May.

"Daisy's awake," she says without preamble. "I thought you'd want to know."

"That's- good," he says mechanically. "That's good. Thank you."

"You coming back?" she asks, but he thinks she already knows the answer. There's no badge, anymore, that he can hand in, but his lanyard, his prosthetic, they're sitting on his - on  _the Director's_ \- desk. He'd left before anyone noticed, left while they were all still preoccupied with what they'd lost, with who they were slowly putting back together in fragments and careful love. It was a coward's move.

He's a coward right now.

"Mack's gonna be pissed," she says after the pause in which he says nothing.

"Thought he preferred base duty," Coulson says, with effort, and Melinda makes a noise that could almost be a laugh.

"You think being Director's going to stop him from working in the field? He's got a partner he can't let down, and she's got a whole team, now."

She probably doesn't mean it as a dig. This is Coulson's shit, Coulson's layers of grief and guilt and weakness and shame, but he hears it anyway,  _a partner he can't let down_ , and Daisy's face appears again in his head, her disappointed expression.

"I have to go," he says, and May takes a breath.

"Take care, Phil," she tells him, ends the call.

He'd wonder why it's always Daisy's face, Daisy's voice, in his head, why even now Rosalind's face is slipping away from his memory (her shocked eyes, the blood welling up, that doesn't disappear, and he wishes desperately he could remember her any other way). But he knows. He knows, too late, and it's just another layer to it all. It feels like disloyalty, and he can't work out to who, to Daisy or Rosalind. Perhaps it's both.

He walks away, because there's nothing else he can do. 

(Daisy's face stays in his memory clear as ever, and her eyes are always sad.)

 

 

He doesn't know whether he's under any protection from SHIELD, doesn't really care. His life's not worth that much. If someone came after him, it would almost be a relief. He puts Lola into storage, rents a nondescript apartment, learns again how to wear his sling without frustration.

At first he watches the news, watches hungrily for any snippet of footage. 

 _Quake_ , the news readers call her,  _the superhero known as Quake_ , and his heart swells with it. There's cellphone video of her working with the Avengers, a moment when he catches her nod at Steve Rogers like they're equals. (They are, they're equals, he's known it all along. He'd hero-worship Daisy Johnson right alongside Captain America. He'd _designed her suit_ , for god's sake). He even sees a flash of familiar red hair, and it makes him feel like a lifetime since he ever worked with Natasha Romanoff. How did he- how _was_ he that SHIELD guy for so long. It feels impossible.

Then it turns, the public sentiment fickle as ever, and Coulson can tell that despite the fall of the ATCU, SHIELD's not going to be able to keep Inhumans clear of this for much longer.

The news gets ugly. Riots, anti-Inhuman hate crimes. Politicians talk of registration and internment camps, the terrorist threat. State governors release statements, one by one. No Inhumans welcome. Borders are closed. How weary must Daisy's shoulders be right now. This is a burden she won't give up, he knows, because Daisy's always been better than he is. He stops watching the news.

He doesn't talk to anyone. Doesn't go out, much. Feels like his life is winding down to nothing. Perhaps he could reinvent as a history teacher. It's not too late, he thinks bitterly.

Months go by. Rosalind's a ghost he can almost forget. (When he forgets, he feels guilty. When he remembers, he feels guiltier. It's a weight he can't escape, and he doesn't know that he wants to. His guilt's so pervasive now it's almost comforting.) Nobody comes for him. Perhaps he's been forgotten more easily.

 

 

There's a knock at his door, late one night, and he's confused, nothing more. A neighbor looking to borrow a cup of sugar? He doesn't know his neighbors. He's anonymous enough to be a ghost himself in this apartment.

He opens the door, and it's Daisy.

 _It's Daisy_.

Her eyes aren't sad. They're wary, cautious, more subdued than he's ever seen. She looks older. Her hair's the same; her face is different, in a way he can't quantify. _  
_

"I'm sorry," she says, "I wouldn't have come, but I had nowhere else to go," and he can't speak, but he opens his door wider, steps aside, lets her come in. She pauses at the threshold, like she's waiting for him to verbalize the invitation. Like it's a line she can't cross.

She does. She crosses into his space, shifts her weight into a stance he still recognizes.

"Take a seat," he tells her, nods at the couch. "You want, uh, a hot drink?"

"Yes," Daisy says, "please, Coulson, that- yeah." His name in her voice is almost a physical shock, and she looks shocked by it too, sits down awkwardly at the end of his couch, touches a tear in her jeans with the tips of her fingers. He busies himself making them both a mug of cocoa, tries not to glance at her, fails. She's so familiar, and unfamiliar, and looking at her is like touching a bruise.

"Thanks," she says when he passes her the drink. "Thanks." She falls silent, clutches at it, sinks a little lower into the couch in something that's clearly exhaustion and adrenaline winding down.

"What," Coulson says, takes a breath. Something's stuck in his throat. "What happened."

"Registration," Daisy says. "The camps. They reinstated the ATCU, pushed through urgent legislation. Mack and May didn't have the power to protect us anymore, not without starting a war. My  _team_ -" She breaks off, takes a deep breath, blows it out in a long sigh. "They took my team in tonight. I was off base. It's the only reason I'm not-" She stops again, looks down, looks up and blinks hard. "I had nowhere else to go," she says again, and Coulson aches with it.

"How did you..." he says, and Daisy almost, almost smiles.

"You think SHIELD didn't track you?" she tells him. "You think we didn't have this apartment monitored?"

"Oh," Coulson says, "oh," and they lapse into silence.

"Mack and May are co-Directors now," Daisy offers after a moment. "They're good."

"Better than I was?" he asks, lamely.

"Yes," Daisy says without hesitation, "yes," and her judgment feels like a slap that doesn't even sting. He winces anyway, and Daisy looks away, drinks her cocoa, rubs her hand over her face.

"I saw you," he says, trying to lighten the conversation, "on the news. Fighting alongside Captain America."

"Yeah," Daisy agrees. "Yeah. He still thinks you're dead, by the way. Wished I could have told him otherwise, but I didn't know how you wanted to play it. I suppose it doesn't really matter, if you're out."

"I suppose not," Coulson says, puts his empty mug down on the coffee table. He keeps staring at Daisy's hands, the way she's spread her palms flat over her thighs, is drawing tiny circles with her index against her knee. He finds himself doing the same with his right hand, feels his missing fingers sharp in a way he hasn't for a long time now. He's haunted by other ghosts than this.

"I missed you," Daisy says, very quiet, and he can't, he  _can't_ , he walked away from her because of this. He doesn't deserve her. Daisy's too _good_ to have missed him.

"I'll get you a blanket," he says, stands up, and watches her pull back, fold herself in.

"I- okay," she says, and it hurts but it's a relief, because it's the same expression she'd made when she'd reached out, laid her hand over his. Her eyes are just as sad as he always sees them.

 

 

He has no spare room, but Daisy falls asleep on his couch within minutes. When he gets up in the night for a glass of water, the blanket has slid off her shoulder, and he sets his glass down, reaches out, tugs it back up to cover her. In sleep, her face is relaxed, younger and more familiar than ever, and he remembers all the times he's watched her sleep before now. He turns away, doesn't look.

"Coulson," she whispers just as he reaches the doorway. Her voice is thick with sleep. He stops, doesn't turn around. "Coulson," she says again, and he waits, hears the blanket rustle and the couch creak as she gets up.

The touch of her hand between his shoulderblades makes him flinch, but she doesn't pull away, just slides her fingers down his spine until they're pressed to the small of his back.

"You  _left_ ," she says fiercely, and all of Coulson's shame and self-loathing rises up again.

"I couldn't-" he says, and Daisy tightens her hand into a fist, clenches the cotton of his t-shirt.

"You left me," she whispers. "I woke up and you were gone. I  _needed you_ and you were gone."

"Nobody needed me," Coulson says, feels his failure all over. "You deserved so much better than me. All I brought was pointless death. You almost died, because of me." He feels like he's talking to Rosalind too, like she's standing here with him, between them.  _I don't need protection, Phil_ , she says, fades into smoke, and Coulson's heart wrenches.

"Here's the thing," Daisy tells him, drags her fingers slowly up his back until her hand's wrapped around the nape of his neck. Her fingers on his skin, it's still electric, it still jolts through him and makes his heart beat faster, and it feels like betrayal.  _Who are you betraying_ , he asks himself, doesn't find an answer. "Here's the thing," she says again. "You didn't give me a _choice_. Do you know how often I've had my choices taken away?"

"I didn't-" Coulson whispers, and she digs her nails in, lets go, pushes him round to face her.

"How dare you walk away from me without even saying goodbye, Phil," she demands, slams him against the doorframe. "I thought I had lost you."

"Skye," Coulson breathes, and his voice sounds wrecked enough that he hardly recognizes it. "Skye, please, I-"

"You never even said goodbye," she says, grabs the back of his neck again, steps into his space. "I never thought you were a coward, Phil Coulson."

"What right did I have?" he asks her, and he feels so defeated it comes out sounding like he's cored right through. "Of course I left. After everything, of course I was a coward. Of course I left."

"Oh," Daisy whispers, "oh Phil." She swallows, blinks, looks up at him in the dim of his apartment. His blinds are half-open; it casts bars of shadow across her face, and when she moves he can see her eyes shining, or her mouth, but not both. "Phil," she says again, curls her fingers against his cheek, and when she kisses him, it's soft, careful, as gentle as the way she'd reached out across a table and touched her hand to his so many months ago.

This isn't absolution, Coulson thinks, this isn't forgiveness, this isn't repair. He can feel Daisy's anger and loss and fear pressing against her skin, his unshed grief and shame, but god, they both need, they both  _need_ , and if all they have is each other, that's not so different to how it's been long before now.

 

 

He kisses back. It's easy and it's so, so hard, and when Daisy tugs his shirt up and off, pushes him back into his bedroom with the kind of reckless desperation that he recognizes, something coils inside him, starts to burn. He pulls off her sweater, clumsily one-handed, starts to apologize, and she kisses it away, bites his lip, shoves him down into the bed. She yanks off her own leggings, climbs into bed beside him, frowns at his boxers until he struggles out of them.

There's no tenderness, no gentleness about her now, like it's all been carved out and replaced with a passion that's mostly anger. He misses it, doesn't miss it, breathes into it when she grabs him by the hair and kisses hard enough to bruise. Daisy's all muscle, all strength, and when she throws one leg over his hip, slides up until she's straddling him, he has to close his eyes. He's so hard it hurts.

"Do you-" he asks, and she shakes her head, grinds down against him, lets him slide slow and thick into her until they're pressed together. Everything's different about this to the last time he'd -  _fucked_ , his mind says. There's no taste of whisky in his mouth, no smooth hotel sheets, no witty quips. Rosalind was Rosalind, Roz,  _Roz_ , and he remembers, suddenly, the last time he'd said that name that pleadingly. _  
_

Daisy slaps him, a crack that echoes through the room, and the sting of it brings him back. 

"Don't fuck me and think of her," she tells him, and god, the harsh ugliness of it, the way she says it so unflinchingly, it hurts to hear it in her voice.

"Sorry," he says, "I- sorry, Daisy, god." She rolls her hips a little, leans down to kiss him, presses her palm flat over the scar of his heart.

"It's okay," she says, "it's okay. I get it."

"You're not thinking of-" Coulson asks, gasps at the way she moves, and she rolls her eyes.

"No," she says, "no, I'm really not." She flips them, easy, in a sparring move that makes Coulson's muscle memory struggle against the counter-balance. "Come on," she says, "you know I  _want_ , Coulson, can't you just-"

He thrusts into her hard and then harder, holds himself up on one hand then on his elbows, tangles his fingers in hers and grips white-knuckled. "Skye," he says again, "Skye," and Daisy moans, breathes hard, laughs in a way that sounds close to crying.

"I haven't been her in so long," she says, "but I can, if you want me to be, Phil."

He doesn't know what he wants. What he wants, he doesn't deserve. This is what he wants, and it's not, and this is what he's  _wanted_. He thinks of her eyes, her cheeks, her voice.

 _I will never forgive him_ , Daisy says in his head, and "oh," Daisy says under him, "oh, that, oh god, Phil,  _please_ ," and when they come, one after the other in a cascade of caught breath, they're both weeping.

 

 

She turns away as soon as they pull apart from each other, falls asleep with her back to him and her shoulderblades sharp in the shadow. It takes him longer, and when he sinks into it, his dreams are fragmented, full of faces he can't quite remember, women with dark hair and sharp expressions and then, through it all, Ward.

He jerks awake. He hasn't dreamed of Ward in months. Daisy's facing him now, watching him, and she doesn't look away, just blinks, slowly, pushes her hair out of her face.

"Hello," she says quietly, and Coulson takes a breath, leans in.

"Hello," he says back, touches her cheek a little tentatively. "Are you- is this..."

"I can leave," Daisy says. "If you want me to. If this was a mistake."

"No," he tells her. "Don't go." 

She doesn't go. She stays, settles into his life, and if it still feels like she's waiting for something, she never voices it.  _This can't last_ , Coulson thinks, distrusts the happiness that surprises him when Daisy stretches out, tucks her toes under his thigh as they're watching a movie, throws popcorn at him. When he wakes to her arm outstretched, flung over his chest. When she watches him cooking, smirks gloriously, steals cherry tomatoes out from under his nose.  _This can't last_.

It lasts for almost six months, and if the last six months were his life winding down to nothing, this is his life distilled to a version of joy that he can't ever fully grasp.

"I think the tide is turning," she says against the nape of his neck one night, and he stills, waits for her to continue. "I think I might be able to go back, soon."

 _Don't go_ , he thinks again, doesn't say it. He knew this was coming. He knew he'd have to let her go.  _Don't go._

Daisy waits another month, and the way she grabs for him, reaches for him in the night, the way her kisses taste desperate, he wants to believe she doesn't want to leave him either.

He gets home from the grocery store one afternoon, and the apartment is still and empty, and he knows. He knows. Without Daisy, it's worse, his life is worse, and he wants to regret it, wants to pretend it all had never happened, but he can't even wish it undone. His bed still smells of her, and there's a sweater, discarded, under his couch, and he feels like the worst sap but he holds it, anyway, holds it long too long.

There's a knock at the door, and he hopes, doesn't want to hope, hopes anyway.

It's Daisy. It's always been Daisy.

"I'm not a coward," she says as soon as he opens the door, "I tried to leave, I wanted to go like you did, but Phil, I-"

"I love you," he says, standing in his doorway and still clutching her fucking sweater in his hand. "I never said it, and I should have. I love you. I'm sorry I left."

"Oh," she breathes, "that's. Yeah. Let's try this again, Phil, let's start over," and it's been about  _letting go_ , Coulson's tried that for so long, but starting over, trying again, it's the kind of forgiveness he thought he'd lost, and it feels like everything, opening new.


End file.
